June 24, 2009

A Joke Isn't Old If You Haven't Heard It Before

The weather here in Kansas City is going to be very warm today. The prediction is 97 degrees and with the humidity, the heat index will make it feel like it is 110 or more. This allows me to tell my annual “how hot is it?” joke. How hot is it? Coming back to the office today, from lunch, I saw a dog chasing a cat across the parking lot <pause> They were both walking. <insert rim shot here>.Now, some of you laughed and some of you groaned and some of you said, “Geesch, that joke is so old, I heard it when I was in the third grade.” I would counter and say that a joke is not old if you haven’t heard it before.

I learned something “new” yesterday that I know is not new, and in fact, might be known by tons of Widows users. However, since I didn’t know it, perhaps you don’t either and that is why I am passing along this bit of “new” information. I have encountered this situation many times throughout my career, been annoyed by it, and yet, never knew I could do anything about reducing my frustration. Yesterday, I was at a client site and the location of some text files I wished to access was stored somewhere on their server. The folder I wanted to access was about six levels down from the root directory and each level had a minimum of 50 folders.Needless to say, migrating to the desired location using Windows Explorer was tedious. Not very tedious the first couple of times, but since I had to do this about every five minutes, it quickly became very annoying. You know the drill (no pun intended)… Open up Windows explorer, search the list of folders for the first level, click on the folder, locate the next level from among 50 folders, find it, click it, and so forth until you have navigated your way to the final level.

It was when I mumbled something about how frustrating it was having to navigate all the way down to Dante’s seventh level of hell, that my contact at the client site stopped me and showed me his technique. Since I think this is such a cool trick, I have to give credit to Patrick Hansen of Penton Media who showed it too me. I hope I am not blowing it out of proportion, but this is one of those tips that I will use often and now, maybe you will too. Navigate to the desired folder in Windows Explorer. Once there, you can add that “location” to you list of favorites at the top of the screen just like you would do for one of your frequently visited websites. Yep, that’s right. Just click on Favorites|Add to Favorites… and enter a description. The next time you need to get to that folder, just open Windows Explorer, click on Favorites and it will be there. Click on the link and you are immediately transported to the desired location. I think this is the closest I will ever get to “Beam me up, Scotty”.

Now, all of these shortcuts to various folders will show up in your list of favorites when you open up Internet Explorer also. Because of this, I created a new folder in my favorites named “Explorer Folders” and the name of each link is the full path I want to go to. Each level is separated with an underscore for clarity. i.e. G_Departments_BookGroup_MarketingRep_Extracts_Colorado_Aug08. What a time saver!Thanks again, Patrick. You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

Guten Tag, wOOdy! I have never thought that this joke is typical of American culture. Let me see if I can EXPLAIN. Of course, when a joke is EXPLAINED, that tends to analyse it too much and (potentially) removes any remaining bits of humor. Never the less, I shall try.

SET SenseOfHumor ON

We all know that (traditionally) dogs chase cats. In the parking lot, a dog was chasing a cat. NORMALLY, your imagination would visualize a cat quickly running in a zig-zag pattern to avoid being caught by the (pursuing) dog. Both animals would be running as fast as possible (with only one thing on their minds - cat = escaping; dog = catching the cat). However, since it was 110 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside, the oppressive heat drained any actual desire to succeed, and thus, they were so exhaused they continued their natural behavior (dog chasing cat), but they were actually JUST walking because that was all the energy they could muster.